I think it's dangerous to have lots of time on your hands as a writer. Time to pursue every little alleyway, to follow every single whim. I feel I've done my best writing when I'm stretched for time, when you're most pressured.

We're much better at dealing with dyslexia today than in 50th, but reading difficulties are still a problem in the U.K. I believe there's currently something like eleven thousand functionally illiterate adults in the U.K.

Gretta sits herself down at the table. Robert has arranged everything she needs: a plate, a knife, a bowl with a spoon, a pat of butter, a jar of jam. It is in such small acts of kindness that people know they are loved.

She liked the way his smile took a long time to arrive and just as long to leave.

The role you've been ascribed in childhood can twist or break apart or seem outgrown, especially when you have your own family and begin to see your own childhood from a different angle. You remember. You reassess. I think that was the kernel of the novel for me. This idea that you change but that your family, the people you were born into, might find that change hard to accept. You no longer fit the mold you've always been ascribed. When the adult children in the book converge back on their small family home there's a sense that they don't fit there anymore.

In the course of writing a book I'll produce loads of pieces of paper to help the novel itself. Diagrams, charts, family trees. And at the end of each book I'll pack it all away. It takes me a while to do it - it's like a relationship that way; there's a period of letting - go, of grief, in a way - but then I box it up, label it, and put it in the attic.

You need a lot of energy to get a novel finished. You need an ability to ignore everyone around you. It's why I don't read my reviews any more. I know a lot of people say that, but I really don't read them.